I sneaked out of the hotel like a thief, taking the servants’ stairs and exit. If Christine had caught sight of me, she would have surely wanted to come along as well, and this meeting was likely to be excruciating enough without her there to witness it. I’d try to keep strictly to business, but seeing Griffin and Elliot there, together…
Just thinking about it made me faintly ill. I didn’t know how I’d make it through with my dignity intact.
Elliot answered my knock promptly and bade me enter. The layout of the house was simple: a single long hall running from the front door to the back, with a parlor and kitchen on the left, and dining room and bedroom on the right. I hung up my hat on the stand in the hall, and followed him into the parlor. There was no sign of Griffin.
“Isn’t Griffin coming?” I asked, surprised.
“In a bit. He was looking into something, I believe.” Orme’s daybook lay on a table, along with a bottle of wine, and two glasses. Several chair surrounded the table, no doubt drawn up for our conference. “Would you like some wine? I’ve already opened the bottle to let it breathe.”
I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and barely a bite then. The wine would go straight to my head.
Which might not be such a bad thing. “Yes. Er, thank you.”
He poured us each a glass and we sat down across from one another. “You must tell me what you think of the vintage,” he said, as if he truly wished my opinion.
I obediently took a sip and found it far sweeter than I’d expected. “It’s quite, er, passable,” I said, not wishing to seem boorish. Then again, did it matter what he thought of me? I cast about for some topic of small talk which might make our wait less excruciating. “My elder sister is married to an English earl. She says the French vineyards have quite recovered from the blight.”
He settled back in his chair, watching me thoughtfully, his wineglass held loosely in one hand. “I imagine Griffin rather enjoyed the challenge of seducing a rich man like you.”
The words shocked me with their bluntness. “I—wh-what?” I managed to say.
“I think you heard me quite clearly,” Elliot said with the same charming smile he usually wore. “I know Griffin far better than you. To go from a homeless orphan to a farm boy to buggering the son of one of the richest men in America…he would have found it quite the coup. I remember the first time he successfully passed himself off as an educated man of class. He was so delighted he sucked my cock on the carriage ride back.”
My throat felt dry, my mouth full of cotton. I took a large gulp of wine. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stick to business, sir,” I gasped, when I could speak again. “I thought you wished to discuss how to save this town.”
He ignored me. “I left out a few things in my account on the way to the cave, you know. Like how I met Griffin in a bathhouse, newly arrived from Kansas and taking any prick pointed his direction. The first time I set eyes on him, he sucked one stranger off while another fucked him.”
My stomach clenched, acid clawing at the back of my throat. What would Griffin think if he knew Elliot was speaking of him this way? True or not, to just say it in such a cruel fashion…
Or was I being naïve again?
I lurched to my feet. The room spun alarmingly, and I grabbed the back of my chair to steady myself. “Where is Griffin?”
“At the hotel bar, I believe, pining for you. Although why I can’t imagine.”
I had to get out of here. I took another step, then stumbled and went to my knees. The carpet beneath me had an odd pattern, and I found myself strangely distracted by it. Were those supposed to be flowers? Or faces? A confused lot of faces, crying out a warning I couldn’t quite hear…
What was wrong with me?
Elliot placed his glass of wine on the table, and I realized he’d merely held it and swirled it about, not actually drunk any. The bottle had already been opened…and Elliot had set out only two glasses, not three, as there should have been if Griffin had actually meant to join us.
He’d poisoned me.
“Not Deianira but Medea,” I said, or tried to say. Only an incoherent mumble made it past my lips. I lifted my hand, hoping to call down the flames, but blackness covered my vision, taking me with it.
~ * ~
Voices.
Light. But blurred, and too distant, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open anyway.
“Well done, Mr. Manning.” Orme.
I opened my eyes again, saw the knee of his trousers as he knelt beside me, but it all seemed very, very far away.
“What will happen to him?” Elliot asked. He sounded underwater, on the other side of the earth. How odd to think I could still hear him.
Maybe I was dead.
“You know the answer already. He will be given a choice. Whatever his decision, the outcome is the same as far as you and I are concerned.”
The creak of a floorboard. “About what Rider told him…”
No, wait, it wasn’t Elliot who was underwater. It was me. Cold water in my ears, in my mouth. It was why everything looked strange, sounded strange. I had drowned in a glass of wine.
Darkness. Then movement. The smell of mule. Branches scraping against my face.
I was dead, and they were taking me for burial. Would Griffin come to the funeral? Christine?
I didn’t like being dead. There was far more moving about than I’d expected.
The scent of cold stone and dampness in my nose. The family mausoleum? Would they put me beside my dead twin sister? I hoped she didn’t mind I’d managed to cling to life for twenty-seven years longer than she had. If we were to spend eternity together, I didn’t want her to start out angry with me.
But I’d managed to disappoint everyone among the living, so I might as well start adding the dead to the list. At least it would be familiar.
If only I’d had the chance to say goodbye to Griffin.
Chapter 18
I awoke—truly awoke this time—to find one side of my face pressed against damp, cold stone.
My mouth tasted like the bottom of an old shoe, and my head pounded mercilessly. Bile stripped my throat, and I lay utterly still, breathing in and out slowly, until the nausea passed.
God, I was cold, my fingers and toes like ice. I curled up, shivering, and wished I had a blanket. Where on earth was I? And how the devil had I gotten here?
Elliot had invited me to his house to discuss Orme…we’d had wine…he’d spoken of Griffin…
No, I’d had wine. He hadn’t, because he’d drugged the bottle. My head hurt abominably, but at least the rest of my anatomy betrayed no untoward aches to suggest he’d taken liberties with my person.
Where was I? Had I actually heard part of a conversation between Elliot and Orme? Or had it just been a hallucination brought on by whatever he had used to drug me?
Very cautiously, I cracked open eyes which felt as if they’d been gummed shut. I lay on my side, on the floor of a cave, my surroundings dimly illuminated by a pale, green-white light. The stink of ammonia burned my nose. I gave up the struggle and threw up on the floor.
I felt somewhat better afterward, enough to haul myself into a sitting position and look around. The smooth cave walls, with lines of pictographs carved into them, looked horribly familiar. The sickly light emanated from some sort of nitrous fungi, whose threads wove across the damp stone like a blasphemous tapestry, and revealed an assortment of metal tables and cabinets.
Oh God. Elliot had drugged me and—it seemed—handed me over to the yayhos. I was somewhere inside Threshold Mountain.
Had Griffin been wrong all along, and Elliot been altered, like Orme or Rider? Or did Elliot work with the yayhos voluntarily? And why?
It didn’t matter. I had to warn Griffin, before Elliot could do the same to him.
Or worse.
The thought of Griffin’s danger drove me to my feet, even though I had to lean against the wall for balance. After a long moment, the room stopped spinning, and I looked about
for an exit. The floor sloped slightly, which I took to be an indicator as to which direction the surface lay. As I cautiously started toward the smaller tunnel leading from the room, I passed by the tables and cabinets.
On the tables lay strange instruments, whose purpose I could barely guess, accompanied by what seemed to be some sort of surgical equipment. Various effects formed a pile on another table: a bowler hat, numerous shirts which looked to have been sliced off instead of unbuttoned, a white scarf, several pocket watches, a diary, and even a box of magnesium flash powder.
The bowler hat looked sickeningly familiar. Hadn’t I last seen it on Webb’s head, the night in the hotel? And the flash powder must have belonged to him as well. Everything here had surely been stripped from the yayhos’ victims, tossed carelessly aside like meaningless trash.
The white scarf seemed familiar, too. Had I not seen it worn by the maids at the Brumfield House hotel?
I had to get out of here. Tearing my gaze away from the clothing and scattered effects, I hastened to the tunnel, which I hoped would lead me out—
A strange, shuffling sound came from its depths.
I froze, my heart in my throat. The sound was of slow, dragging feet, but with something horribly off about the timing. Step. Step-step. Step. Step. Step-step. Step.
I took an involuntary step back myself. My throat closed around the quick, shallow breaths which were all I could seem to get into my lungs. I didn’t want to see whatever was in the tunnel. This was a nightmare, brought on by drinking too much wine. I’d wake up in the hotel, or even on Elliot’s couch, any moment now.
Why couldn’t I wake up?
The nacreous light revealed the figure as it shambled into the room, and I found out exactly what had happened to Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Hicks.
I wish to God I hadn’t.
~ * ~
They were mostly naked, but rank horror overcame any thought of modesty, save that the lack of clothes made it far too easy to see what the yayhos had done to them. Between them, they had four legs but only two arms, their bodies sewn together from hip to the top of their heads. Along with their arms and ribs, much of their skulls and brains must have been removed, to graft them together. Their mouths worked in ghastly synchronization, faces slick with mucus and tears. A groan sounded from their mouths, a dumb, animal sound. No recognition showed in their cloudy eyes. Still, they reached for me, one arm ivory and the other dark, and took another shuffling step closer.
I lurched back, a cry of horror and pity locked in my throat. My shoulders collided with one of the cabinets, knocking open the doors and revealing the contents.
Some of the shelves held odd, cylindrical jars, reminding me of the canopic urns the Egyptian pharaohs had used to house their various organs for eternity. Other containers, these of glass and filled with some viscous liquid, held floating disembodied hands, legs, organs, and even a head. The face belonged to one of the missing outlaws.
The head opened its eyes and looked at me.
I let out a shriek and leapt away, nearly colliding with the abomination behind me. I had to get out of here. My chest hurt; I couldn’t breathe—
The scrape of chitinous claws sounded in the tunnel leading deeper into the mountain.
The abomination moaned again and shambled painfully away, as if it still bore in its mutilated brains an instinctive fear of what made its way toward us. I couldn’t run. Terror had turned my legs to blocks of ice.
A hulking shape came into the room from the lower entrance. As it drew nearer, the dim light of the cave fungus showed me the full aspect of the yayhos at last. In terms of terrestrial life, it most resembled a giant, red species of crustacean, many legged like a prawn. Yet in many ways it was not like that at all, from the bat-like wings to the cone-shaped head, terminating in a nest of squirming tentacles where a mouth should have been. Amidst the ridges of its head, I glimpsed a dozen tiny eyes watching me.
“Dr. Whyborne,” it said.
~ * ~
I stared at it in shock. It knew my name. A hysterical laugh tried to force its way out of my throat, as I wondered how one might be properly introduced to an unthinkable horror. Did I shake its claw? Its slimy feelers? Inquire after its mother?
It moved closer, its acidic odor burning my nose like fresh ammonia. “You are a man of science,” it said. Its voice was an awful, buzzing sound, mimicking the words well enough I understood them, and yet managing to be utterly inhuman in every substantial fashion.
“Y-Yes,” I answered. My voice broke, and I wondered how fast the thing could run, and if there was any hope at all in trying to flee. “Th-that is, I study ancient languages.”
The tentacles writhed, and its head shifted color from red to pale orange. “You have no need to fear. There is much you could learn from us.”
“Learn?” I repeated stupidly.
“We have many ancient records. We know much of your species you have forgotten.” As it spoke, I realized nothing approximating a larynx produced its odd, buzzing speech. Rather, it rubbed together its smallish forelimbs to generate the sound, much like a cricket or grasshopper might. “But we have more to offer a man such as you. What is the knowledge of a single species on a single world? Long have we sought out minds such as yours. We desire to know how humanity thinks, and to lift up certain members of your species. All the secrets of your kind’s past will be laid bare to your eyes, if such is your wish, but the wonders of the universe await you as well.”
The treacherous laugh tried to break out again. How often had I lamented the loss of the library at Alexandria, the burning of the Codices in the Yucatan, let alone the simple depredations of time and carelessness? What gaps could these beings potentially fill? If this interview had taken place anywhere other than this chamber of horrors, how enticing it all would have sounded.
“You would not be able to travel as we do in your current body, but we have perfected the arts of surgery,” it went on.
“S-So I see,” I stammered, with an involuntary glance at the abomination in the corner.
“You see only what becomes of those who threaten us. We must protect ourselves, just as you would.” The yayho unfurled one wing. After a moment of confusion, I realized it meant to gesture toward the odd metal containers. “You can be an ally. Your brain can be removed and perfectly preserved. Various instruments to allow sight, hearing, and speech can be connected. Perfectly comfortable. You may speak to one or more of those who have undergone the procedure, if you wish to be reassured.”
Dear heavens, there were brains in the containers? Living brains, still somehow capable of thought and perception?
“There is no pain,” it added, as if it knew my thought. “In this bodiless form, you could travel to the outer planets, to Yuggoth, to worlds beyond this solar system. You could see and speak to beings you cannot currently imagine. Learn new languages, cultures, ways of thinking. Physics and mathematics, should those intrigue you.”
Oddly enough, at that moment, I barely even saw the cavern around me, let alone the yayho. I was, instead, a child at my mother’s knee, sounding out my first word of Greek, feeling a thrill rush through me as what had recently been incomprehensible ordered itself before my understanding. Or a youth, avidly reading of the archaeological discoveries in the Orient, dreaming back to the time of the ancients. Or maybe a young man, in my first class at Miskatonic University, my mind expanding to soak up knowledge like a sponge, desperate always for more.
Or a man, making fire from his will and a few spoken words.
The thrill of discovery…of revealing things hidden by time or ignorance…burned in me. Surely, Christine felt the same when she opened her tombs and temples, shining light where there had been only darkness for thousands of years. It was not about material gain, about gold or jewels or even mummies to draw the crowds. It was about discovery, about knowing. About feeling one’s own mind expand as new horizons unfolded like the opening of some exotic flower, both strange and familiar at the same
time.
Now I had the opportunity to learn things undreamt of by human scientists. To know at least some of the secrets of the universe, things which would otherwise remain undiscovered in my lifetime.
And if I had to do it bodiless, after recent events, such a state seemed less a drawback than it would have only a few days ago.
The yayhos wanted my cooperation…but why? They had me at their mercy. Why not do whatever they wished with me, as they had the Webbs or the Kincaids? Their offer was entirely one-sided: I would gain knowledge, but what would the benefit be to them?
Unless they weren’t really making the offer because of my interest in science.
“And while my brain is off in a jar, having adventures, what will the rest of me be doing?” I asked.
“Your body will be well tended and cared for, do not fear.”
Yes, I rather imagined it would. Because if they could remove one’s brain with such ease, no doubt they could put another in its place. No wonder Orme’s handwriting had changed. Had they even replaced him with a human, or one of their own, or some other alien creature which owed them allegiance?
“What do you really want from me?” I asked, amazed my voice didn’t shake.
Its feelers squirmed, its head flashing through a series of colors. “We wish to remain hidden,” it buzzed. “Your planet has materials we need; your species is not among them. We do not seek open conflict.”
“Then why not simply move elsewhere? Coal can be found in many places, some of them still wild.”
Its buzz took on a higher pitch. An indication of annoyance at my questions, or something else? “Our mode of travel from world to world is nothing with which your kind is familiar. We must find doorways, places in your world which act as thresholds to step across.”
Had I wondered from whence the mountain got its name? Now I rather wished I’d never found out.
Whyborne and Griffin, Books 1-3 Page 42